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Another Blackout; $30 Seats Plentiful

September 27th, 2012

[UPDATE: The Redskins-Bucs game is officially blacked out.]

The Bucs-Redskins television blackout will be made official at 4:25 p.m. today.

Why is Joe so certain? Well, first and foremost, reams of $30 tickets, including all fees, remain available on TicketMaster.com for Sunday’s game. This was not the case before the blacked out home-opener against Carolina.

That’s a lousy sign, especially with Sunday’s weather forecast calling for a kickoff temperature of 85 degrees, a flimsy chance of rain and tolerable humidity. Yes, the local economy is rough, but there are loads of locals around that can afford a $30 ticket.

Opening day against the Panthers had an official attendance total of 51,533 (aka tickets distributed). Actual attendance was 46,758 (butts in the seats) per the Tampa Sports Authority. On Sunday, expect something approaching those totals — not good enough to meet 85-percent-of-non-premium-seats threshold to get the game on TV.

38 Responses to “Another Blackout; $30 Seats Plentiful”

Another thing the Bucs and even Rays are missing these days are the fans who travel to see their teams play. This area (even during the great years) counted on a certain percentage of fans from other teams to fill the stadium. It’s not great for us hard core Bucs fans, but it is part of the doing business in this area. Hotels & Restaurants also count heavily on these fans showing up. The problem is I’m not seeing hardly any fans who have come to stay in Tampa just to watch their team play. This is going back several years now and I think it is a trickle down effect. A lot of your middle class in this area work for the hospitality industry. The retail industry who is really raking it in are the grocery stores and the cable company’s.

I honestly believe if the bucs go back to the winning ways the stadium will fill itself with fans. Let’s not forget when the bucs were winning there was a massive waiting list to get tickets, I know the economy is tremendously different but maybe the stadium will be full without a wait lost with this economy. If we win they will come. Hell I remember a few years back even the bulls sold out a game because they were winning.
By the way did anyone see kellen Winslow ask to get cut by the patriots.

Even if I were a millionaire and lived five minutes from the stadium I still wouldn’t attend games. Nothing compares to the big screen and HOME. It’s only going to get worse as time goes by. Get used to it. I have.

They are going to eventually start reducing the size of stadiums. The game experience has moved to the living room. the NFL has quadrupeld it’s TV revenues under Goodell, they continue to do fine with merchandise. Shrink the stadiums, upgrade the experience and continue to maximize profits through your television contracts. Don’t buck the trend with blackouts! You could even double the price of tickets if you lessened the ammount of seats each stadium had by half and make more money due to exclusivity!! What do I know….

I disagree, there are plenty of teams teams that are still selling out and have waiting lists. Florida has never been known for having the most rabid fans coupled with the fact the offense looks like complete garbage, Ray J won’t be selling out anytime soon. Plenty of people still love going to games but Tampa’s play isn’t exciting the already weaker Tampa fan base enough to show up.

I tend to agree with Colorado Buc and FL Boy in Dallas, nothing compares to the living room for watching a game, and coming in second is the local sports bar/restaurant with Sunday Ticket, a distant 3rd is the actual stadium experience. While there will be markets that can support 65 – 70K stadiums, week in and week out, regardless of how the team is doing, I think fewer and fewer cities will be able pull that off, in fact I think there are maybe 12 teams right now that even if they had double-digit loss seasons for back-to-back years, would they still sell-out. And it’s not just about the local economy or size of the population (those are factors).

The NFL has done such a great job in making it’s game presentable and accessible through television, that the Live experience is now left for that cross-section of fans that truly love the stadium experience and have the means to get there consistently.

If they really want to prevent black-outs, they need to re-think the model for the stadium experience, as it can no longer be “every team needs a 65,000+ seat stadium, with hard plastic seats, minimal amenities, and over charge for parking and concessions” cookie-cutter it’s been for the past 40 years. They have to need to figure out how to make it so more people want to go.

I can afford $30-$75 a ticket, for two tickets once a year, but I really don’t care to go, as for me, there’s nothing gained in going to the game over watching at home or in the bar. And since the past two years of black-outs have turned me on to other means of experiencing the games, I don’t even have the excuse, “if I don’t go, I don’t get to watch it”. And I love this team, my Mondays are a little brighter when the Bucs win, and a little harsher when they lose, but for me there’s nothing gained by going to the games.

I know why people don’t go to games now. It finally hit me. Look at the Bucs’ road games since the end of 2008. The Bucs have played dreadfully when televised to the local community.

It’s not money. It’s not fan allegiance. It’s not parking. It’s not lack of free agent spending. It’s the fact that fans see Freeman drilling the ball into the ground, Doug Martin running for a yard on 1st down, 2 running plays during an urgent 2 minute drill…. really, the only thing the Bucs have drawn attention for is they’re the only team in the NFL to ATTEMPT to do ANYTHING during a kneel down.

Seriously, those road games are “auditions.” The Bucs may have played well at home, but no one is investing in a ticket to see a good performance when the track record of what they’ve seen is just God-awful. You want asses in seats? Blow out a couple of people on the road. None of this “grind it out-come from behind-Raheem-style” wins. Blow someone the f*** out. Then do it a couple of times. People think what they see on TV is what they’re going to see when they drop $30. Well no one is going to drop $30, sit in the sun, sweat and pant all while watching an offense that moves in 2 speeds – SLOW & STOP.

As Al Davis once said “Just win baby…” This team has been down so low (remember we had the Glazer pinching every penny for the last 4 years) and now just because the Glazers open up their pocket books they can’t expect a flood of fans to come back unless winning is a part of the equation. I think if we had won the Cowboy game the stands would be much fuller but alas Josh Freeman and Mike Sullivan took care of that one. Here is a novel idea run Blount on first down and have Martin be our 3rd down guy. If they wanted to pound the rock with success it should have been that formula. Now lets see if they can salvage the season. Pounding Martin up the middle time after time is pretty much brain dead coaching unless you have All Pros at every position on the O-Line and we do not have that.

I took no offense either way. I work for the corporate office of one of the local grocery stores. Again, we really aren’t making money. Food prices have taken an even sharper turn than what you’re seeing. We cut into our margins to the point that we just hope to break even at the end of the year.

yeah alot of teams sell a large amount of their tickets to corporations, alot of the corporations here do business here because its cheaper and florida ranks near the bottom in wages and are not going to be buying tickets. alot of the companies that leave here is because they pinch more pennies and outsource overseas

Sure there are teams that are selling out their stadium, but the trend is leaning towards the living room in most cases. I remember seeing a rabid fan base in the 90’s with a season ticket waiting list in tampa, but they didn’t have HDTV’s Direct TV Sunday ticket, and only rich dudes had man caves. Economically the NFL was no where near the revenue that they see today, in a supposed beat down economy. The Glazers rake in more money today than they did on 2002. In 2002 revenue to the Bucs at the prime of their popularity the Glazers cashed in on $168 mil in revenue. Last year as a craptastic 4-12 team they made $258 million. The Broncos in the same stretch pull in $6 mil more, and sell every game out. So if you honestly believe that the future of football is in the stands, keep crossing your fingers, hoping that nobody throws a rock at your glass house. The below websites are Forbes data from 2002 and 2011 in case you wish to check that out.

Say what you want, I believe the negative press by the local media and talkshows are keeping the casual fans uninterested. Read the Buccaneer articles by the Tampa Bay Times and you’ll only gather that they publicly hate Greg Schiano. Stroud, Jones, Shelton, Smith, and on a lesser degree Holder do nothing but trash our team. Stroud and Jones on their radio show berate Schiano every day. The casual fans read this stuff (only newspaper in town) and hear this stuff daily. Most will take what all of them say as gospel. Then there’s the negative outside press that doesn’t help either.

Chip Kelly and the Oregon Ducks have sold out 86 straight sell outs. Excitement and imagination sells. You should see how much Duck gear they sell. Great uniforms, beautiful cheerleaders, legendary offense ( 52ppg) and fantastic defense. (Arizona had the ball 6 times in the red zone and zero points)

I don’t blame one person for not going. As stated before, the home experience IS THE BEST! Big ole HD screen, my leather couch, BBQ hot from my grill, good, ice cold beer (not that Bud Light slop) and I can go to the bathroom whenever I feel like it and freeze the game with my remote.

No paying $20 for parking, $9 for warm, lame beer and paying $100 a ticket so I can sweat my arse off and stare at the back of a replica jersey because some jackarse thinks by him standing up the whole g-damned game that somehow Josh Freeman will complete a pass or Aqib Talib won’t whiff on a tackle, and drunks getting into fights.

I don’t have to throw away hundreds of dollars a year to prove to anyone I’m a Bucs fan. F-you to whoever thinks that!

If the game is blacked out, I will just watch it online later that night or watch the condensed version on Sunday Ticket the next day.

You said: “Again, we really aren’t making money. Food prices have taken an even sharper turn than what you’re seeing. We cut into our margins to the point that we just hope to break even at the end of the year.”

This is the worst news I have heard in a while. I thought the food debit cards made you guys safe. This is scary bad. Football is just a game…but grocery stores going out of business will be a horrible time for America. Mark my word.

Well ,I live way out of real backout area east coast but because of Orlando market..100 miles away I can’t see gaMe. Used to go all of them but gas is almost 4 bucs a gallon. So I just wat h lame computer simulation , on yahoo. This sucks come on you lazy cheap bastards , spend the bucks so I can watch for free

Why does joe trip all over himself about these $30 tickets. Is that supppsed to be a reasonable price? To sit in the worst seats in the stadium? How about lowering all ticket prices? If you don’t like tarps then lower all ticket prices. I had season tickets and they jist weren’t worth it. Neither is buying tickets at $30 to sit in the east side upper decks.

Nothing to do if the game is a stinker. The stadium experience is not that great anymore. Just a big hassle whether the team is winning or not.

There are a lot of reasons why the Bucs don’t sell out.
1) Too many losing seasons with no hope in sight.
2) Ownerships poor choices over years.
3) The at home experience versus sweating your ass off, over paying for crappy draft beer, waiting to use the restroom, paying for parking, listening to some drunk dumbass drop the f-bomb in front of your kids and missing most of the game due to poor visibility.

Personally, I think all NFL games should be free. The truth is the teams make the true money on tv revenues anyway. Having fans reserve free tickets online or by phone would work…maybe do that with the $30 seats and then charge $30 for the more premium seats.

At this point, that may be the only option left open to the NFL because of the at home experience.

If they want more people at the games though, they need to do away with the blackout rules at the very least. All they are doing is hurting attendence in local markets at this point. Fans view it as a betrayal and instead of seeing their teams improve they listen to sports talk and tv personalities that are biased.

“Read the Buccaneer articles by the Tampa Bay Times and you’ll only gather that they publicly hate Greg Schiano”

Yep…..they kept defending Raheem for a long time but they’re already being hard on Schiano. I get it……Raheem was black and everyone liked that. Kind of like how people voted for Obama just cause he was black. Closet racism.

This makes me sick. You forget to mention those so called $30.00 Tickets actually cost $45.00 after ticketmaster service fees, and delivery charges. And then when you factor in parking costs/ Beer/Water (something you must buy in the 100 Degree heat) it just simply isn’t affordable to us who are struggling to get by. That is the real reason we aren’t attending the games.

The fan base is here, everyone I know is a bucs fan! I am sick of the media agenda!